STEP Prep Thread 2015

I'm very pleased to finally understand what was going on question 2 and have got through that correctly eventually.I think I'll have a go at Question 5 now and call that a day because I have to learn more S2 for Additional Further Maths and to help me answer the Statistics questions in STEP I.I have noticed that the earlier STEP papers have 16 questions on them so there is a lot more questions than 1092 to do so plans to start late make little sense when the more STEP questions done the better.Modulus of Elasticity is on one of the Mechanics questions on that paper so I will have to avoid that but I have done M1-M2 so has the syllabus changed since 1987?or is M2 in other boards M2?.I think I'm avoiding Mechanics and Statistics until I've done the necessary content I was going to avoid Statistics but now I might have to avoid Mechanics too.

Don't stress yourself out too much, you're definitely ahead of most of the competition so don't feel per day you need to complete X amount of STEP just make sure that you consistently do STEP. I'll reply to your query in the morning

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March 2015.Most of it is legible I think but some of it is just a mess my working is all over the place I hope I can correct this for the STEP exams.Are you taking STEP?I have now completed the 1st of 1092 STEP questions, the solutions linked in he OP seem very similar to me but a lot more tidy and better explained-I have attempted/completed around 10 questions though but I am going to do them all again.None of the solutions show the graph for some reason.

I'm very pleased to finally understand what was going on question 2 and have got through that correctly eventually.I think I'll have a go at Question 5 now and call that a day because I have to learn more S2 for Additional Further Maths and to help me answer the Statistics questions in STEP I.I have noticed that the earlier STEP papers have 16 questions on them so there is a lot more questions than 1092 to do so plans to start late make little sense when the more STEP questions done the better.Modulus of Elasticity is on one of the Mechanics questions on that paper so I will have to avoid that but I have done M1-M2 so has the syllabus changed since 1987?or is M2 in other boards M2?.I think I'm avoiding Mechanics and Statistics until I've done the necessary content I was going to avoid Statistics but now I might have to avoid Mechanics too.

My expression for dy/dx is y^2 too much on the second term of the bottom I multiplied by y on the bottom along with x when dividing and factorised incorrectly 2 very silly mistakes.Now I have integral y/(1+y^2) dy=integral 1/x(1+x^2) dx.I can integrate the left side as 0.5ln(1+y^2) but the right hand side is a problem impartial fractions should do it but I don't know which ones I have tried a/x +b/(1+x^2) but that's not getting very far.

EDIT:x=tanu works very nicely.

When you have 1 + x^2 on the bottom of a partial fraction, you need Ax + B on the top. This version no longer appears in C4 (for Edexcel at least) but is an important part of partial fractions. It applies to any fraction where the bottom is a quadratic that cannot be factorised.

The STEP specification changed to the current one in for the 2002 papers, to match up with the changes to A level.

If I don't do X questions per day I will not complete all past papers of STEPNow I am on Question 5 and I don't understand why the limits have to be pi/2 and 0 why couldn't they be 3pi/2 and 0 because when I did it I ended up solving cosx=0 which leads to x=pi/2+kpi and cosx=1 x=0+kpi.For the next part I'm also stuck as to why it equals -pi and then integrating the next part gives me 4/[(a-b)+(a-b)cos2theta+2b] and what can I do with this?that 2b is annoying stuck on the bottom otherwise this would come out very nicely because I got the value of the first integral to be 2 so that makes this integral 2/x and x=acos^2theta+bsin^2theta=acos^2theta+b(1-cos^2theta)=(a-b)cos^2theta+b the integral is now2/[(a-b)cos^2theta+b]=4/[(a-b)(1+cos2theta)+2b]=4/(a-b)+(a-b)cos2theta+2b.

What did you get?

You might want to update the OP with the 2014 stuff as well...

That said I did all three STEP papers this summer and did the majority of questions from 2000 onwards, so if anyone wants advice or help or whatever I am in a position to help.

First of all, you don't have to do X questions per day. It's however many you feel you need/want to do, and if you don't do any STEP for a week or so it can be a good thing to just let you take it all in. Coming back to STEP after a few days can help massively!

For question 5, I have some points which may help you. For why the integral equals $-\pi$ when have $\alpha > \beta$, are you familiar with the fact: $\int^b_a=-\int^a_b$?
For the final integral, I get what you're trying to do, but integrating the expression you end up with (which I believe from what you've written is $\int \frac{4}{(a-b)+(a-b)\cos(2\theta)+2b} d\theta$) is going to require a fair bit of work!
Have you considered trying a different substitution from the one you were told to use in the previous part? If you're still unsure, look at this hint and try and follow it through from that:

It is not legible. You particularly need to work on this as an examiner reading through that will likely not be on your side. Have your teachers not complained about this before?

(On a side note, could you remove all the personal monologues from the OP? They are not useful or relevant and distract from the purpose of the OP which is as a quick direct source for STEP resources)

I will not be removing my advice on STEP which is needed to help people preparing for STEP as a person who has got through several questions eventually but still struggles with STEP I think I'm in a good place to give advice so that people don't panic.

My work can be quite scrappy but the STEP questions are hard which makes them particularly scrappy answers because you don't know what to write next usually.I got great marks at A Level so it is usually fine, I will need to practice STEP so that my answers become legible as I understand what I'm doing.

The advice is quite unhelpful because you're misdirecting people to focusing on the earlier, less relevant spec questions. I barely did any 1987-1994 questions... they are not a necessity.
STEP is different because not every paper will be the same, you can't guarantee a certain type of question to come up but you can be certain that a topic like integration, will always turn up. For this reason extra prep from the old spec (which has outdated questions) isn't as useful as you like to think.

Honestly even if a STEP question is hard and you don't know what to write, it still shouldn't get that scrappy, if you feel your equations or sentences are all too bunched up, leave a line with a new thought or guess on the question... by the time exams come around you should be able to follow through most STEP questions without multiple guesses. Btw great marks at A level does not correlate with great marks in STEP, the two are an entirely different ball game and for STEP you need to check:
- presentation
- logic of your deductions
- attention to detail
- how the solution all comes together and makes sense
Whilst a-levels, you just need to match your answers up with the mark scheme, which isn't terribly hard...

Work on your presentation, it comes into the marking at points

STEP is not a race to completing all questions in a set order, preparation should enable you to attempt the majority of the questions in a paper by understanding how STEP terminology works and how familiar, recurring topics turn up with a new twist.

I'm sure I read that Cambridge will give full marks to correct answers for STEP regardless of working out but might be wrong.

A good plan which I plan on doing and think is a great idea is to attempt these earlier papers and then later on(a couple of months before exams or earlier possibly) later questions 2000+ can be attempted is this not a good idea?By being unprepared we could be wasting 2000+ questions that we could do with a lot of prep and having started the 1987 paper I can tell you these seem to be fairly standard STEP questions and very similar to later papers so would be good practice.